Typically, workers' portion of overall premiums runs $454 a year for a single employee (14.8%) and $2,084 for a family (26%). Those are increases of $95 and $283 respectively since 2001.

Meanwhile, patients are paying more for deductibles, the portion of the healthcare tab they're responsible for before insurance kicks in. The annual deductible for so-called PPO plans, the most common plan today, rose 37 percent, to $276 a year.

Co-payments for prescription drugs are getting slightly more expensive, too. More employers are moving to a "tiered" system of pricing, charging employees more for name-brand drugs than generics to encourage them to use cheaper alternatives. Generic drug co-payments average $9, up $1 from last year. Co-payments for name-brand drugs for which no generic substitute is available rose $2 to $17. And name-brand prescriptions that have generic substitutes have, on average, a $26 co-payment, $10 higher than a year ago.

As you can see, the city's proposed co-pay is a little light relative to the the non-government world. Of course, Rhode Island also has extremely high insurance premiums, apparently double the national average, thanks to the fine work of our General Assembly which has effectively eliminated most competition.